Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) provider, DivideBuy, has acquired a £300 million lending facility as it continues to focus on its growth and expansion efforts.
As mentioned in a release, the funding from investment management company Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP, which also includes a minority equity investment, will be “instrumental in driving DivideBuy’s charge as a leading player in the point-of-sale market and further bolster the disruptive Fintech’s C-suite, platform investment and retailer network, both in the UK and internationally.”
As stated in the announcement:
“This follows an already successful 12 months for the Newcastle-under-Lyme business, which was ranked first place on Deloitte’s UK Technology Fast 50 2020 list and the only business outside London to break into the top 10 on the list, after reporting an average three-year growth rate of 20,733% to the year 2019/2020.”
The interest-free credit POS finance market, supported by agile technologies, such as DivideBuy’s, was worth almost £10 billion last year, and will be “worth £27 billion by 2024.” DivideBuy, founded in 2014, has since carved a niche in the sector by “adopting a customer-centric solution.”
The announcement also mentioned that with 500 retailers, including Cloud Nine and Simba Sleep, already using DivideBuy’s tech, the firm “achieved a milestone £150 million in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) earlier in the year, and is on track to hit £175 million by the end of 2021.”
Recently, DivideBuy announced a partnership with “recommerce” experts, musicMagpie, creating a rental platform for the retail company. The proposition “marks another area of growth for the business as it continues to meet growing demand from tech-savvy consumers and remains ahead of market competitors,” the announcement noted.
Rob Flowers, Founder and CEO at DivideBuy, stated:
“DivideBuy has one goal – to make buy now pay later transactions easy and accessible to retailers and customers. The sheer scale of this investment underlines the strength of DivideBuy’s business model, and how we’re revolutionising the POS finance sector by owning the full lending journey with assistive technology, automated soft credit checks and transparent lending with no hidden fees.”
Flowers added:
“The flexibility of our technology treats each customer as an individual, and also gives retailers revenue-boosting strengths such as higher checkout conversions and higher basket sizes. With this backing from Davidson Kempner, we can now make buy now pay later transactions available to even more retailers, and extend the alternate payment method to many more consumers who want greater payment choice at the POS. We’re thrilled to embark on the next stage of our expansion and achieve our ambitious growth plans.”
Two years ago, DivideBuy acquired more than £60 million of equity investment and debt financing from private equity investors, Souter Investments and Jon Moulton’s private investment vehicle, to which Perscitus LLP “acts as consultant, together with two UK banks.” This was used to “develop its pioneering technology and provide leverage to accelerate its lending.”